I'm Having a bit of a problem with ZoneAlarm Free Firewall and I was thinking someone here could offer some help.

The most recent versions of OpenOffice (3.4.1) and LibreOffice (4.0) have an about 5 second delay when copy-pasting text to an outside program (e.g. notepad). Within that brief, yet annoying period of time, pasting just does nothing. It doesn't matter if you right-click and select copy, press ctrl+c, or use "edit" menu. Copy-pasting within or from outside to OpenOffice works perfectly fine. Same goes for cut-pasting, ~5 second delay when pasting to an outside program.
I tried installing LibreOffice today to see if it would work, but the same phenomenon occurs in it as well.
The previous version of OpenOffice (3.3) worked fine, but because of issues displaying .pptx presentations correctly, downgrading is unfortunately not an option for me.

As I'm running several background programs (ZA Free Firewall, Avast! AV, Spybot Teatimer), I restarted in safemode to see if the issue still happened without any extra stuff in the background. It didn't, so I restarted normally and started to shut down background programs to se which one caused it.
Turns out ZoneAlarm is the cause, or at least with it shut down, the copy-paste delay does not occur.

At the moment, I have the OpenOffice components (or are they called modules...?) in ZA's application control settings, with internet access allowed (ZA pop-up asked) for the quickstarter application (soffice.exe, soffice.bin), with Calc, Impress, and Writer still at their initial settings (smartdefense at "auto" and everything else at "ask") as AZ hasn't asked about those yet.

So far, I have reinstalled OpenOffice as well as ZA (fresh installs for both), and the problem persists. Would someone have any idea what could be causing this and how to solve it?

As I'm running several background programs (ZA Free Firewall, Avast! AV, Spybot Teatimer), I restarted in safemode to see if the issue still happened without any extra stuff in the background. It didn't, so I restarted normally and started to shut down background programs to se which one caused it.
Turns out ZoneAlarm is the cause, or at least with it shut down, the copy-paste delay does not occur.

I would suggest to uninstall Spybot Search and Destroy.There might be compatibility problem with Spybot Teatimer & ZoneAlarm.You could disableTeatimer.But I would uninstall altogether.

See if this will resolves your issue.

Don't have any other suggestions to offer.I don't use either programs or ZoneAlarm Free Firewall

The suggestion is indeed correct. For a systematic testing you could do the following:

1.) Click Start -> Run (on XP)
2.) Type MSConfig in the run box (or search box in VISTA/Win7) and click OK (ENTER in VISTA/Win7)
3.) Once in MSConfig, click the ServiceTab
4.) Place a check in "Hide All Microsoft Services"
5.) Now remove checks from everything other than TrueVector Internet
Monitor and ZoneAlarm LTD toolbar (if present), and click OK.
6.) Click the Startup Tab,
7.) Order by publisher and disable all items except items from Microsoft and Checkpoint
8.) Restart your computer

Now test if the issue persist. If it doesn't go back to MSCONFIG and check back the disabled items by group of 4 or 5. Start from the service tab and then move to the startup. This way you should hopefully find the issue.

Just ran a test with both OpenOffice and LibreOffice latest versions on a Win 7 SP1 and ZoneAlarm Free Firewall 11.0.000.054

I had absolutely no problems with copying and pasting between a text doc and the apps and visa-versa.

No delays at all either by doing it by right clicking and pasting or CTRL+V

The ZA firewall has nothing to do with copy and pasting and has no way to monitor or interfer with it on its own.

But the other security apps you have monitor file activity and processes so it can be the other apps creating the issue or a really bad combination issue with the office apps the other secruity apps and ZA.

I tested services/processes. To top it off, I tried safe mode with networking - I understood that shouldn't start any other stuff than just the bare necessities?
Copy-pasting works w/o delay -> start ZoneAlarm -> there is the delay.

I presume this is would be a pretty clear indication that it is ZoneAlarm somehow causing this?

Not very clear how you tested it and if you followed correctly the procedure described above that does not involve safe mode nor the bare necessary approach. If yes, then there may be lower level conflicts with your system or an uncommon configuration of your OS/drivers (otherwise we would have seen more post like yours as those office suites are very common).

I guess it's time to look for another solution that can play better with your system.

I notice it when trying to copy and paste info from cells to the clipboard to copy to other cells. With ZA open, there's a 5 second pause before the cell is editable again after copying to clipboard. I close ZA, try again, and the pause goes away. I re-enable ZA and the pause returns. I've tried this editing different cells to make sure it wasn't just something with OpenOffice when you edit one particular cell, i.e. changing cells after the first cell might not do this, but, it does.